{"id":3332,"date":"2005-05-19T13:47:04","date_gmt":"2005-05-19T20:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2005\/05\/19\/feed-types\/"},"modified":"2019-12-13T14:57:10","modified_gmt":"2019-12-13T22:57:10","slug":"feed-types","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2005\/05\/19\/feed-types\/","title":{"rendered":"Feed types"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:8237,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/radio.weblogs.com\\\/0001011\\\/2005\\\/05\\\/18.html#a10147&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20080724004920\\\/http:\\\/\\\/radio.weblogs.com\\\/0001011\\\/2005\\\/05\\\/18.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-10 06:23:49&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 11:24:26&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 11:24:26&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:8238,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/redirect-home\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/redirect-home\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:6221,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/click.linksynergy.com\\\/fs-bin\\\/click?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941.10000170&amp;type=4&amp;subid=0&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Looking at the <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2005\/05\/adsense_for_fee.html\" title=\"Eclecticism: AdSense for Feeds\">Google AdSense for Feeds<\/a> announcement, <a href=\"http:\/\/radio.weblogs.com\/0001011\/2005\/05\/18.html#a10147\" title=\"Scobleizer: Google brings AdSense to RSS feeds\">Scoble takes a moment<\/a> to rank the various basic types of feeds that can be produced now:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Here, let&#8217;s rank RSS feeds from worst (least useful for readers) to best.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Worst: headline only feeds with ads.<\/li>\n<li>Almost worst: partial text feeds with ads.<\/li>\n<li>Barely passable: partial text feeds without ads.<\/li>\n<li>Better: Full text feeds with ads.<\/li>\n<li>Best: Full text feeds with no ads.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>  I&#8217;ll only subscribe to the bottom three kinds of feeds and if your content isn&#8217;t really &#8220;must read&#8221; (the New York Times, for instance) then you better stick with the bottom two.<\/p>\n<p>  Again, when I subscribe to an RSS feed that means I want a long-term relationship. Think about what that means. How abusive of me do you want to be? On the readership side we get to decide how much abuse we&#8217;ll put up with. You might find that your readers won&#8217;t put up with much. In which case you&#8217;ll have to decide if a few extra bucks is worth a decreased readership.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Dead-on, I&#8217;d say.<\/p>\n<p>The first two &#8212; &#8216;worst&#8217; and &#8216;almost worst&#8217; &#8212; would <em>guarantee<\/em> that I would stop reading that site if that were all they offered. At that point, I&#8217;d feel that I&#8217;m being treated as a consumer, rather than a reader.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve got a few &#8216;barely passable&#8217; feeds in my newsreader, but I try to make them as rare as possible. If I try to subscribe to a site and the default feed is partial-text, the first thing I&#8217;ll do is peek into the source code to see if I can find a full-text feed. Even if I <em>do<\/em> subscribe to a partial-text feed, those sites get far less readership from me than others do, as it&#8217;s rare that the provided summaries catch my interest enough to bring me to the site.<\/p>\n<p>(And a quick aside here &#8212; if you&#8217;re determined to do a partial-text feed, would you at <em>least<\/em> take a moment to actually write summaries for your posts that the feed can use? The default &#8220;first 20 words&#8221; snippet is virtually pointless. Give me a <em>reason<\/em> to read everything you write, don&#8217;t just assume that I&#8217;ll automatically stop by anytime something new pops up&#8230;with 300+ feeds in my newsreader, I just don&#8217;t have time for that.)<\/p>\n<p>Once we get up into the two &#8216;best&#8217; options &#8212; full-text feeds, either with or without ads &#8212; the ads don&#8217;t bother me quite as much, for two reasons. Firstly, the text of the post is generally longer than the ad and the ad can be easily ignored if I&#8217;m so inclined; and secondly, with Google&#8217;s targeting technology that picks which ads to run based on content, it&#8217;s more likely that an ad will be topic-appropriate (and, therefore, more likely to potentially catch my eye) with a full-text feed.<\/p>\n<p>Me, I&#8217;m still going to stay ad-less in my feed. Advertising just isn&#8217;t that big of a deal to me &#8212; I signed up for Google AdSense out of curiosity, and so far, there&#8217;s no reason to get rid of it. I limit the ads to a single spot (below the first post on my index page, and between the post and the comments on my individual pages) so they&#8217;re visible but not intrusive (at least, that&#8217;s the intent), and every few months I get a little bit of money from Google. Not much &#8212; about $300 a year &#8212; but these days, every little penny helps.<\/p>\n<p>I do also participate in the Amazon Associates program and the iTunes Affiliates program, but neither of those has netted me much of anything. I think I&#8217;ve gotten about $10-$15 from Amazon in the past few years, and I haven&#8217;t seen squat from iTunes yet. I just don&#8217;t have the readership numbers for these programs to be really profitable&#8230;but then, that&#8217;s not exactly something I worry about this. If I&#8217;d gotten into this whole blogging thing for the money, I&#8217;d have gotten out of it <em>years<\/em> ago.<\/p>\n<p>(That said&#8230;would it kill you to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect-home\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"Amazon.com\">go shopping<\/a> every so often? &#8220;)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/click?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941.10000170&amp;type=4&amp;subid=0\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"iTunes\" border=\"0\" width=\"61\" height=\"15\" src=\"http:\/\/images.apple.com\/itunesaffiliates\/logos\/iTunes_sm_bdg61x15.png\" \/><\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/ad.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/show?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;bids=78941.10000170&amp;type=4&amp;subid=0\" \/> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/stat?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941&amp;type=3&amp;subid=0&amp;tmpid=1826&amp;RD_PARM1=itms%253A%252F%252Fphobos.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZSearch.woa%252Fwa%252Fcom.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction%252FadvancedSearchResults%253FsongTerm=Real, The%26partnerId%3D30\" title=\"Search for 'Real, The' on the iTMS\">Real, The<\/a>&#8221; by <a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/stat?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941&amp;type=3&amp;subid=0&amp;tmpid=1826&amp;RD_PARM1=itms%253A%252F%252Fphobos.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZSearch.woa%252Fwa%252Fcom.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction%252FadvancedSearchResults%253FartistTerm%253DDavis, Don\/Tech Itch%26partnerId%3D30\" title=\"Search for Davis, Don\/Tech Itch on the iTMS\">Davis, Don\/Tech Itch<\/a> from the album <em><a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/stat?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941&amp;type=3&amp;subid=0&amp;tmpid=1826&amp;RD_PARM1=itms%253A%252F%252Fphobos.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZSearch.woa%252Fwa%252Fcom.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction%252FadvancedSearchResults%253FalbumTerm=Animatrix: The Album%26partnerId%3D30\" title=\"The Album on the iTMS\">Animatrix: The Album<\/a><\/em> (2003, 8:02).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking at the Google AdSense for Feeds announcement, Scoble takes a moment to rank the various basic types of feeds that can be produced now. Dead-on, I&#8217;d say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2040],"tags":[599,25],"class_list":["post-3332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-weblogs","tag-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}